Motion passed at RUCU Emergency General Meeting 20.07.2020
A Jobs first approach for Reading UCU.
This branch notes the briefing produced by Moray McAulay on the Post-COVID-19 Restructuring Process, opened by the University last month.
Reading UCU resolves to:
1. Mandate Sally Pellow as Branch President to:
a. Design and implement a programme of consultation with members over the
extremely serious threats to their livelihoods senior management is making as a
matter of urgency.
b. This programme will identify members’ priorities in respect to those threats,
and be based around UCU’s recently launched national campaign, Fund the
Future.
c. The programme will include consultation both of Departmental reps and of
individual members directly.
d. The programme must begin immediately, and be fully carried out well within the remaining consultation period which closes on 31 July 2020.
e. In order to ensure this happens, the design and implementation of this
programme, including any plan of communications associated with it, will not be
subject to further review.
2. Mandates Sally Pellow as Branch President, along with the rest of the committee, to:
a. Act on the basis of the members’ priorities identified in that consultation to
defend them against those threats made by senior management.
b. In particular, the branch mandates Sally Pellow as President to select a Branch negotiating team to represent UCU members in any consultation and negotiation meetings with senior management over the threats they are making as part of their Post-COVID-19 Response Programme.
3. Mandates Sally Pellow as Branch President, along with the rest of the branch committee, to seek to move to direct negotiations in order to protect members against those threats. These direct negotiations will take a ‘jobs first’ approach that stops or dramatically reduces the scale of redundancies of UCU members. This objective would be balanced against minimising the cuts to members pay, terms and conditions, with preventing redundancy.